Well it has been almost a month since my last post and I am in a much better place. Although I still have moments at work when I want to just drop everything and leave, I have found a way to deal with my frustrations and find some daily happiness. I wanted to share some things that have worked with me this past month.
- Leave work at work: Anyone in medicine can attest to this. Some patients and their stories just stick with you. They can even haunt you for a while if you let them. But for this past month, when I left the hospital, I left it all behind. I made sure that I exercised and read things that didn’t have to do with work. During my burnout phase, I would literally come home, open my laptop and go through patient charts from that day. It had to stop. Now when I leave work, I don’t go through any charts until the next morning when I am preparing for that day’s rounds and cases. I am still working on trying to compartmentalize the things I see on a daily basis, especially in the trauma bay.
- Pick back up old hobbies: The day I realized I was burned out, I was having coffee with a friend. We were talking about our frustrations with residency and he asked me, “So do you have any hobbies?” My initial reaction was, “Psh! Yea I have hobbies!” And then a moment of pause. I couldn’t even remember what I liked to do before residency. I rarely went on runs anymore. I barely danced. I never pleasure read anymore. Some nights it takes all my energy just to make myself dinner. So I joined a dance studio and started taking classes. I told myself I would do this at least once a week and it has been awesome! Setting a small, reachable goal such as taking a class once per week that has nothing to do with medicine and is good for my soul has really made a difference.
- Don’t sweat the small stuff at work: Seriously, in medicine, there is a lot of “small stuff,” especially when you work in a county hospital. County hospitals can be difficult to navigate. It is difficult to get patient’s what they need sometimes and it can just eat away at you if you let it. A few weeks ago it took me about an hour and 10 phone calls to get a patient a special walking boot that she needed. It shouldn’t be that hard. I can tell you first hand that at other hospitals, it ISN’T that hard. I can’t say that I have found a perfect way in dealing with this. I am still a work in progress in this regard but for now I am trying to take a breath when I feel myself getting frustrated.
- Figure out what makes you happy in your work: During my period of burnout, I felt trapped in my work. I felt like I had no way out. That was a miserable feeling. I had to take a step back and try to remember what it was about medicine that made me happy. I lost sight of it all. But it truly is the patient interactions. It’s being able to understand someone’s disease process and knowing what to do to fix it and heal them. Moreso, it’s being able to sit down with a patient and hold their hand and explain all this to them. It’s being the one to step out into the waiting room after a case and tell the family that their loved one is doing well and everything went okay. I think I know what area of surgery I’d like to focus on now and the idea of doing this for the rest of my life excites me and gives me a feeling of relief.
Burnout sucks. It is so common in medicine and especially in residency and it is something that we need to talk about more. I believe that people can find a way out of burnout but the first step is recognizing that you have it. Special shout out to my friend who made me realize that I had no hobbies anymore outside of medicine. For that was my moment of realization.
The Grumpy Surgeon 